Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Henry Corbin & American Poetry

We were alerted to these two links on Tom Cheetham's blog:

http://henrycorbinproject.blogspot.com/2008/11/henry-corbin-and-american-poetry.html

http://henrycorbinproject.blogspot.com/2009/05/henry-corbin-american-poetry-part-2.html


He would like to hear from anyone with an interest in Corbin ikn the context of writing, poetry, poetics.

tcheetham@gmail.com

Monday, May 18, 2009

News From Gloucester

Councilors withdraw rezoning plan for Fort

By Patrick Anderson
Staff Writer
May 07, 2009 05:50 am



Amended, maligned and stripped of its hotel by more than a year of withering criticism, the city's plan to rezone the Fort neighborhood and ease restrictions on development is dead.

City Council withdrew the plan Tuesday after the latest round of talks with planners and Fort stakeholders failed to produce an acceptable compromise.

The plan had already been almost completely refashioned from the proposal drawn up by Mayor Carolyn Kirk's administration last year that centered around language clearing the way for a hotel on the former Bird's Eye warehouse building on Commercial Street.

Councilors on Tuesday said all of the changes and modifications to the plan had rendered it almost unrecognizable and at this point there was confusion about what the plan was supposed to accomplish.

"After a year-and-a-half of meetings, we all can agree a change is needed, but have lost all focus on what the change would be," Councilor Joseph Ciolino said.

"I think what became clear is that we were all heading in different directions," Councilor Philip Devlin said.

The Fort is zoned for marine industrial use, but includes dozens of non-conforming residential units.

While some property owners have looked for economic relief from zoning changes that will allow them to bring in residential and mixed uses, residents and other business owners argued that the changes would lead to condominiums, gentrification and a threat to the fishing industry.

The loudest outrage in the historic neighborhood, central to the city's fishing community and industry, has been reserved for the idea of a hotel.

Councilors indicated that they will request the Planning Board begin work on a new Fort rezoning plan.

Patrick Anderson can be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com

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Monday, May 04, 2009

CHARLES OLSON CENTENARY CONFERENCE

CHARLES OLSON CENTENARY CONFERENCE
June 4-6 2010
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver British Columbia

One hundred years after his birth, and fifty years after The New American Poetry anthology transformed the landscape of contemporary poetry, Charles Olson, arguably one of the most influential figures in twentieth century literature, remains a puzzlingly marginalized figure. As Ben Friedlander writes in Olson’s Collected Prose, it is “as if the unread Olson were the necessary ¾ submerged berg making possible the ¼ ice floe.” In the spirit of bringing Olson back into the polis—and delving into the “3/4 submerged” portion of this “maximal” figure—the Charles Olson Centenary Conference seeks new readings of Olson’s poetry, poetics, and his influence on twentieth and twenty-first century literature and culture. Topics to be addressed could include (but are not limited to):

● Black Mountain College reconsidered
● The New Canadian Poetry? Olson north of the border
● Olson, economics, and democracy
● Olson, geography, and the spatial turn
● Olson and American history
● Olson and the archive
● Olson / Melville / Shakespeare
● Olson and Mexico
● Olson, Women, and the Feminine
● Olson and his contemporaries
● Olson and 21st century poetry
● Olson’s influences/Olson’s influence
● Poetry as research
● Poetry and the polis
● The politics of poetic form

Please submit abstracts of 250-500 words to Stephen Collis at olson-conference@sfu.ca by October 1 2009. More information and conference updates will be available at http://www.sfu.ca/olson-conference.